


Fate's Apprentice

by TheNarator



Category: The Flash (TV 2014), Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: Angst, Cisco's powers are not magic but everyone thinks they are, Dr. Fate is a dick, Gen, Imprisonment, Kidnapping, So much angst, the tower of fate is also a dick
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-08
Updated: 2018-03-23
Packaged: 2019-03-28 11:35:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13903194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheNarator/pseuds/TheNarator
Summary: Eleven year old Cisco Ramon has superpowers. They're not very impressive, but he has them. As it turns out, he has no idea how valuable his abilities are to the Lords of Order and Chaos, or what lengths they'll go to to obtain them. When Cisco finds himself under the power of Dr. Fate, he'll have to use all his cunning and all his powers if he's going to make it home.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> basically this is a fic born of my desire for two things:  
> 1\. acknowledgement that the young justice version of dr. fate is a really jacked up excuse for a superhero  
> 2\. the chance to express my theories about how cisco's powers work in relation to how magic works

“No,” said Dante, with his back to Cisco.

“What!” Cisco demanded. “You said we could go today!”

“Well some of the guys want to go to the arcade,” Dante replied, still not facing Cisco as he shook his piggy bank upside down. “And I want to go with them.”

Cisco grumbled but said nothing more. The two of them were in Dante’s bedroom, Cisco sitting on the bed and Dante standing at the desk as he emptied his piggy bank and sifted through the resulting pile of coins for quarters. It was a warm Sunday morning, nearly summer, and Dante  _ had _ promised that they would spend the day together. Now, however, he was going to back out of that plan.

Dante sighed and glanced over his shoulder. “I’m thirteen now,” he said, shoving quarters into his pockets. “I can’t be spending all my time with my eleven year old brother. It’s not cool.”

“But we were going to-” Cisco glanced at the open door, but no one was in the hallway, “-practice with my powers today. We haven’t gone in over a week!”

“Yeah, well, it’s not like they’re gonna build up or something,” Dante turned to Cisco at last. “You get headaches when you use them too much, not when you don’t use them enough.”

Cisco looked down, biting his lip as he fought tears. He didn’t like going alone. He wanted to go with Dante, so they could work out how to use his powers better together. He liked being able to share this part of himself with his brother, after Dante had told him not to tell anyone else, not even Mom.

“Armando would have gone with me,” he said, very quietly.

Dante’s expression went suddenly hard. He narrowed his eyes. “You’re a little jerk, you know that?” he said, voice trembling with anger.

Cisco looked down, knowing he shouldn’t have done that. Dante’s words stung, but not as much as he knew his own must have.

“I’ll go with you some other day,” Dante said, a little calmer but still looking at Cisco with those same hard eyes. “But I don’t want to hear you talking about him anymore, got it?”

Cisco sniffled. “Got it,” he said, a little moodily.

Dante didn’t say any more, just turned and stomped out the door and down the stairs.

Cisco had a choice at this point. He could go by himself, or he could sit around the house playing video games and hope that Dante would want to go after school tomorrow. He could act, or he could wait. Deciding that doing something was better than doing nothing, he went downstairs after Dante and headed for the garage. As he wheeled his bike outside he saw Dante already taking off on his own bike, accompanied by four of his friends. They were all older than Cisco and didn’t think he was cool enough to hang out with.

Swinging his leg over his bike Cisco set off in the opposite direction. Being on his way made him feel better, and he pedalled harder, letting the wind blow his hair back out of his face. He did like doing this, even if Dante did not come with him. While it was true that he didn’t get headaches from  _ not _ using his powers he still felt it building up when he didn’t use it for too long. He could feel it pressing at the borders of his skin, fighting to come out, wanting him to use it, to find out what it could do. They hadn’t yet found out what would happen if they left it too long, but Cisco was too excited by it to find out.

Within fifteen minutes Cisco was outside the Forever Garden Cemetery. It wasn’t a particularly popular place to bury a loved one; most of the headstones inside were plain, and teenagers had a tendency to come and drink beer at night. It was nearly untended, not particularly picturesque, and completely out of the way.

It was also somewhere no one would question the two boys going.

He left his bike by the gate and walked inside, weaving between the headstones as he made straight for a back corner. It was secluded, and the headstones there were old, no one having come to visit them for a long time. Three large trees on one side and the cemetery wall on the other shielded him from view, and the wall and some of the headstones bore evidence of his previous visits. With limited options living in the suburbs just outside a major city, it was the perfect place for training.

Cisco took up position near one of the trees, facing the wall around the cemetery grounds. It was already starting to crack a little under repeated blasts, and Cisco wanted to make a small hole in it so that he and Dante could come and go as they pleased. Also he just wanted to prove that he could break things with his powers, and breaking one of the headstones seemed like asking for trouble. He thrust his hand forward and fired a blast at the wall, but that didn’t seem to do anything, not even widden the decent sized crack he’d gotten going last time. He gritted his teeth and, thinking about how angry he was at Dante for breaking his promise to come too, fired again. This time the sound of shifting stone resulted, and the crack spiderwebbed out at one end.

Before Cisco could truly appreciate his accomplishment however, the sound of clapping drew his attention toward one particularly large headstone with an angel perched on top. Out from behind it stepped a boy, a little older than Dante, with pale skin and dark hair that spiked up on either side of his head. He was dressed head to toe in black, and an orange striped cat was draped around his shoulders.

Immediately Cisco shoved his hands behind his back and tried to look innocent. “Whoa, did you feel that, uh, earthquake?” he said hurriedly. “It seemed kinda sudden, I wonder if-”

“It’s ok,” said the boy, and his voice was high and oily, sing-songy like a little kid’s. It made Cisco feel slightly on edge, although he couldn’t have said why. “You don’t have to pretend for me.”

“What do you mean?” Cisco asked, still feigning ignorance. “I’m not pretending.”

“You’re pretending you don’t have any powers,” the boy corrected. “I’m telling you, you don’t have to pretend when it’s just me.”

“I-I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Cisco stuttered, feeling slightly panicked. He wondered exactly how much this boy had seen.

“I could sense your power from miles away,” the boy told him, reaching up to stroke the head of the cat. “You’re not very good at hiding it.”

Cisco stared. “You could . . . sense it?” he asked curiously. “How?”

“Because,” the boy grinned, then clicked his fingers, “I have powers too.”

The boy opened his hand, and a ball of bright red fire appeared hovering about his palm. Cisco’s mouth fell open, and he took a reflexive step forward, wanting to investigate, but the boy drew back his hand and threw the fireball at the crack in the cemetery wall. There was a loud noise like an explosion when it hit, and Cisco covered his eyes against the bright light, but when he looked back there was a gaping hole where the crack had been.

Cisco looked back at the pale boy with wide eyes. “Who are you?” he asked in wonderment.

The boy grinned. “My name’s Klarion,” he said, with a tone of deepest satisfaction. “And you?”

“I’m Cisco, Cisco Ramon,” Cisco said in a rush. He had never met another person with powers before, and was eager to share the experience with someone else. “Where did you get your powers?”

“I’ve always had them,” Klarion shrugged. “I’ve honed them through study. You don’t seem like you’ve had yours very long.”

“I haven’t,” Cisco shook his head. “I got mine from an . . . accident. I’ve had them less than a year. I’ve been training, but . . .” he trailed off, suddenly embarrassed by his lack of control. Why hadn’t he trained more?

“That’s ok,” Klarion laughed, voice honey-sweet and resuring. “Why don’t we practice some together. It’ll be fun!”

“Yeah!” Cisco agreed eagerly, bouncing on the balls of his feet. “What else can you do? I can make portals, and see the future a little bit, and-”

“I can make portals too,” Klarion told him, and with a wave of a hand a circle of red and black energy swirled into existence behind him. “Let’s go somewhere else, where we can have fun.”

Cisco practically tripped over himself in his haste to get to the portal. It looked just like one of his own, only different colors, and he was almost desperate to see where it led. Klarion held out a hand, and Cisco took it, waiting to let himself be tugged through the portal behind his new friend.

The vibes didn’t happen very often when he was awake. They were more common when he was asleep, and when he was awake they usually hit him out of nowhere. To be yanked into a vibe now of all times, when he was excited to be doing what he was doing, when he was  _ focused _ , came as a shock. His world was washed with blue light as he was transported to another time and place, standing in some kind of stone courtyard with walls around it. There didn’t seem to be anything beyond the walls, just the starry night sky, like they were on top of some kind of tower. Klarion was still there, but standing considerable farther away, across the courtyard from a boy with red hair. Klarion created another fireball, this one bigger than the last one, huge, and hurled it at the boy. Cisco wanted to shout but couldn’t, couldn’t have done anything even if he could move in vibes, and the boy with red hair was engulfed in flames.

Abruptly Cisco was dumped back in the present, his hand still in Klarion’s. Klarion began to tug Cisco toward the portal, just as Cisco had expected him to, but Cisco threw himself backwards until he hand slid from Klarion’s.

“What’s wrong Playmate?” asked Klarion, all innocence as he looked at Cisco, but suddenly something seemed far more off about him than it had before. He looked creepy, with his pale skin and spikey hair, almost like a pair of horns. How had Cisco not noticed that before?

“I just remembered,” Cisco lied easily, “I have to get home. I have to ask my brother before I go with you.”

“You’re a big kid Playmate,” Klarion argued lightly. “You don’t need him to tell you what to do. Let’s go-”

“I have to go!” Cisco shouted, then turned and opened a portal.

He did not focus well enough to make the portal take him all the way home. Instead he ended up on the street, a little ways outside the cemetery. He looked both ways hurriedly, but there was no one around, and he breathed a sigh of relief.

“That wasn’t nice,” said a voice behind him, and Cisco whirled around to see Klarion emerging from his own portal. He was not smiling anymore. “I thought we were going to have fun!”

“Go away!” Cisco shouted, and opened another portal.

They continued in this way for nearly half an hour. Cisco would open a portal to somewhere not terribly far from the last place he’d portaled to, and a few seconds later Klarion would portal in after him. He deliberately went in the opposite direction from home, toward the city, away from his mother and Dante, but he did not see away of escaping from Klarion. He would have to go home eventually -- he would have to stop using his powers eventually -- and then what would he do? He had to lose Klarion before then, but no matter where he went, no matter how hard he concentrated he never managed to make it far enough that Klarion couldn’t follow. It was useless.

Eventually Cisco found himself near the docks, and portaled quickly into one of the warehouses. Before Klarion could follow him he ran for the nearest stack of crates, managing to duck behind it just before the next red and black portal opened behind him.

“Play~mate,” Klarion called, still in that strange sing-songy tone of his. “Where’d you go Playmate? Weren’t we having fun?”

Cisco wanted to shout at him to go away, but he didn’t dare, and anyway he was out of breath.

“I will find you you know,” Klarion assured him, taking a few leisurely stepped across the floor of the warehouse. “You can’t hide from me. I can smell the power on you.”

Cisco sucked in air, trying desperately to think of what to do next. He didn’t think he could fight Klarion; Klarion was much stronger than him, if what they’d both been able to do to the wall was any indication. He didn’t know what to do, there didn’t seem to be any options unless . . .

His thought were interrupted by a bright yellow light shining on either side of the stack of boxes, and Klarion’s oily voice giving a strangled cry. Suddenly a deep, booming voice, like two voices layered over each other, was speaking, and it took a moment for Cisco to realize what it was saying.

“Leave this place witch-boy,” said the booming voice. “You will not obtain the child.”

“No fair!” shot back Klarion’s voice. “I found him first!”

“Brat,” said the booming voice, and Klarion yelped again as another flash of light illuminated the warehouse.

Cisco crouched to the floor, arms wrapped around himself as lights and sounds came spilling into his hiding place. The roar of fire, shouts and screams, the strange audible brightness of the yellow light drowned out the racing of his heart. Shadows flickered along the wall between the stacks of boxes, Klarion on the ground throwing red fire and other energy up at a figure that was flying through the air. Cisco wanted to do something, wanted to go out and help whoever had come to save him, but fear kept him rooted to the spot.

“You’re not winning this time Nabu,” said Klarion, his shadow firing blast after blast at the figure in the air. “I got here first and I’m the one who’s going to teach him!”

“You would be no teacher, whelp,” the booming voice replied. “A corrupter is far more likely.”

“And what are you going to do, let him choose?” asked Klarion sarcastically. “One of us is going to win and it’s going to be me!”

“Are you certain?” demanded the booming voice.

Suddenly there was a light, yellow at first but then so bright it was pure white, so bright that the noise it made was deafening. Just before he clapped his hands over his ears Cisco heard Klarion scream, and then he had to curl in on himself, screwing his eyes shut tight against the light. For a few moments it just kept getting brighter, and brighter, pressing on his eyelids, until eventually it began to fade. It grew dimmer and dimmer, and eventually Cisco could open his eyes again and take his hands off his ears.

The warehouse was quiet. Cisco did not hear the sounds of the battle going on anymore. Someone had won. And someone was gone.

The sound of footsteps abruptly split the silence, and Cisco shrank back against the pile of boxes. They came slow and deliberate, straight for his hiding place, and there was nowhere he could go. He had no way of telling who was coming for him, or what they would do when they-

“It’s alright, child,” came a voice, and Cisco let out a shaky breath because it was the one that sounded like more than one voice layered over each other. It was no longer loud and booming, but it was still clearly not Klarion.

Cisco stood and peeked around the edge of the box he’d been crouching behind. Standing on the other side was a man dressed in blue and gold, a shining golden helmet over his head and a golden cape falling around his shoulders.

“You were lost, but Fate has intervened on your behalf.”

“Dr. Fate!” Cisco cried excitedly, coming fully out from behind the box to face the superhero who had rescued him.

Being an eleven year old with budding superpowers, Cisco had made something of a study of the Justice League. Dr. Fate’s long absence and recent reappearance in particular had been the subject of much debate among his school friends. Now, with the hero himself standing before him, having just saved his life from some evil being, Cisco could scarcely think of what to say.

“Thank you,” he said, his mother’s drilled-in politeness taking over.

“I could not have allowed Klarion to take you,” Dr. Fate said, “it would have been unwise.”

“How did you know I was in trouble?” Cisco wanted to know. “Were you following Klarion?”

“No,” Dr. Fate said. “It was your power that drew me here.”

A little thrill went through Cisco at the idea that someone in the League knew he had superpowers. Well, not particularly impressive superpowers, he knew he had a long way to go, but they were clearly enough to get Dr. Fate’s attention, and apparently Klarion’s.

“Klarion said the same thing,” Cisco told him. “Will he come back?”

“Almost certainly,” said Dr. Fate. He turned and raised a hand, opening a portal made of the same shining yellow light he used for everything. “Come with me.”

“Where are we going?” Cisco asked, looking between Dr. Fate and the portal.

Dr. Fate gestured for Cisco to go first, and Cisco stepped through the portal. It didn’t feel like the strange rush of his own portals, more like stepping through a sunbeam, and he wondered if he could ever make his own portals feel like that or if it just depended on who was making them. Then he was on the other side, and he found himself in a large room with stone walls. It was sparsely furnished, with a few heavy wooden side tables along the walls and bookcases full of leather bound books, and at the far end was an enormous fireplace with a fire crackling invitingly in its grate. Two cozy looking armchairs faced the fire at an angle, a book open on the end table next to one of them.

“What is this place?” Cisco asked as he heard Dr. Fate step through behind him and close the portal.

“The Tower of Fate,” he said simply. “Here you will be safe from Klarion and his ilk.”

“Until you can catch him?” Cisco asked, going past the armchairs to look at the fire. It was warm after the cold floor of the warehouse.

“Klarion is chaos personified,” Dr. Fate informed him. “He cannot be contained.”

Cisco frowned, turning to Dr. Fate. “Well I can’t just stay here,” he said, a little confused.

Dr. Fate looked at Cisco impassively. “Why not?”

Cisco blinked, feeling a strange sinking sensation in his stomach. He wasn’t sure how, but the room suddenly felt smaller.

“Uh, I should get going,” he said, turning his back to his host and holding out a hand to open a portal. “My mom will be worried about me, and-”

Cisco felt a sharp tug at his chest, and suddenly he was being lifted off his feet. He yelped and flailed a moment, but then he was flying backwards to land softly on one of the cushioned armchairs.

“This place is safe,” Dr. Fate repeated. “You should not leave it yet.”

Cisco swallowed, feeling sweat prickling at his skin. He tried to jump down from the chair, but suddenly a band of yellow light stretched across his waist, holding him in place. He struggled, grasping the arms of the chair and trying to pull himself forward with greater and greater urgency, but nothing worked.

“There is no reason to be frightened, child,” said Dr. Fate’s voice. He came into Cisco’s view, what little of his face was visible behind his helmet still completely expressionless.

“Let me go!” Cisco said, wriggling as he tried to find a way out of the chair. The light held fast.

“It is best you remain here for now,” Dr. Fate said placidly. “Your power has drawn quite a bit of attention.”

“I want to go anyway,” Cisco said shakily. “Thank you for offering, but I really need to be going.”

“Your enemies circle you like sharks,” Dr. Fate told him, making Cisco’s pulse jump. “You wish to abandon the ship that has rescued you for those dangerous waters?”

_ I want to know that I can, _ Cisco thought. “Yes,” he said.

“Your fear drives you,” Dr. Fate said, with the air of someone reaching a conclusion. “I will not let it lead you into peril. You will be safe here.”

“I don’t want to be here!” Cisco fought to keep his voice below a shout. “You, you can’t . . . I want to leave!”

“What awaits you that is so enticing?” Dr. Fate wondered.

“My family will be worried,” Cisco said, not exactly honestly. His mother would not be worried about him for several hours. Dante probably wasn’t even back from the arcade yet.

“Is that all?” Dr. Fate asked.

Cisco swallowed. That was not the response he had been expecting. Adults cared about parents knowing where there kids were. Adults cared about kids making it home in time for curfew. Surreptitiously Cisco hung his hands over the arms of the chair, pointing at the ground. He concentrated on home.

“Family’s a big deal,” Cisco said, the only thing he could think to say.

“Not when weighed against the greater good.” Dr. Fate narrowed his eyes, and suddenly Cisco’s hands flew to the arms of the chair. He tried to move them, but more light like the band around his waist encircled his wrists, twining with his fingers to bind his hands tightly to the chair.

Cisco panicked. He began tugging frantically at the bindings on his wrists, struggling to position his hands to open a portal below himself, but nothing would persuade the light to let up. It was warm to the touch, but grew hot when he pressed too hard against it. It seemed like the more he struggled the tighter it held him, and the tighter it held him the hotter it became.

“Stop it!” Cisco shouted. “You’re hurting me!”

“Cease struggling, you are hurting yourself,” said Dr. Fate impatiently.

“I can’t breathe,” Cisco said, and it was true, his chest tightening as his vision started to go blurry around the edges.

“Your fear prevents you from seeing things clearly,” Dr. Fate reached for him with one gauntleted hand. “I will take it from you.”

“Get away from me!” Cisco screamed, twisting to evade his grasping fingers, but a new binding suddenly appeared to hold his shoulders in place.

“Be calm,” Dr. Fate instructed, and Cisco turned his head and closed his eyes, waiting to feel cold steel in his hair.

Nothing happened.

A moment passed, then two, and still Dr. Fate did not take hold of him. Cisco opened his eyes, to see the gauntlet hovering inches from his face but not coming any closer. Cisco wondered if perhaps Dr. Fate didn’t need to touch him to do whatever he had planned to do, but he did not feel any calmer than he had before. He tilted his head as far as he could, looking around the hand in his face to see that Dr. Fate’s eyes were shining from within his helmet. Then suddenly he lowered his hand.

“I must go,” he said, then turned and opened a portal. “I will deal with you when I return.”

“Wait!” Cisco cried, but Dr. Fate was already stepping through the portal, leaving Cisco bound to the armchair behind him.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me and hedgi have the broad strokes of this story planned out along with the key events, but there will probably be some scenes i have to write on my own. that being said, starting next chapter there will also be lots of timeskips. i ain't trying to write years of time day by day.

Cisco wasn’t sure how long he spent bolted upright to the chair. It seemed like most of the night, but it might have been only a few hours. There were no clocks in the room where he’d been left, or at least none in his field of view, so he was left to count the minutes, wondering when his captor would be back.

He struggled of course, but it seemed that Fate’s presence wasn’t required to maintain the binding, so it held fast. He cried a little, when the pain and the fear and the loneliness started to get to him. He screamed until his throat was raw for someone to come save him, but if anyone heard him then no one came. He might as well have been alone in the universe. He made plan after plan, each more ridiculous than the last, and finally he managed to drop into a light doze.

The sound of a portal opening woke him. His head snapped up from where it had lolled forward onto his chest, to see Fate stepping out of one of his shining golden portals. The only thing Cisco could think to do with Fate standing before him was not show fear. He couldn't let his emotions be taken away. He had to get out of these bindings somehow, and if that meant playing along, then he’d play along.

Fate looked down at him impassively, and Cisco did his best to not show how terrified he was. “You have been crying,” Fate noted, almost clinical in his tone. “This is the Tower of Fate; it exists in a separate dimension to the one you know. You will not be disturbed here, even in my absence.”

Cisco swallowed and tried not to tremble. Fate hadn’t actually said  _ no one can hear you scream _ , but he might as well have.

“Can I, have some water?” he asked, and was gratified that his voice didn’t shake, even if it came a little haltingly from his mouth.

For a moment Fate said nothing, staring at Cisco with unreadable eyes. Cisco tried to look innocent, and when Fate spoke it was with the same tone he said everything.

“If I unbind you, will you make another attempt to leave?” It was neither suspicious nor accusatory; it was merely a question.

Cisco knew the answer he had to give. “No,” he said, in a small voice. He knew if he made a run for it right now, with Fate right there, he wouldn’t ever be trusted enough to be left unbound again.

The bindings around his hands, waist and shoulders all disappeared. He examined his wrist, checking for marks. There did not seem to be any burns from the heat, even though his skin felt tender. He looked up at Fate, but before he could say anything what appeared to be a golden chalice appeared in front of him, hovering in the air. He grasped it in both hands, and felt it grow heavy and solid in his grip. The water was cold, and didn’t seem to run out no matter how much he drank. He peered inside, to find that it was empty when he looked. He didn’t dare turn it upside down.

“How does it do that?” he asked curiously.

“Magic,” Fate said.

Cisco frowned. “I know I look small, but I’m old enough to know that magic’s not real.”

“It is not?” Fate said condescendingly. “Then what do you call the chalice? My power? Your own?”

Cisco, unbeknownst to Dr. Fate, had given this question a lot of thought. “My powers have to do with vibrations,” he rattled off easily. “The vibration blasts, obviously, but the portals also work by altering the vibrating frequency of things that pass through them. They go temporarily to another dimension that’s layered overtop of ours, just on a different frequency, then get altered back so they can return to this dimension in another place. Your powers work kinda the same way I think, by altering the vibrating frequency of objects to allow them to channel the energy of another dimension. The physics there are different, it being another dimension and all, so the energy you channel from there seems to defy the laws of physics here. Not magic, just transdimensional energy.”

“Impudent brat,” Fate muttered. “You forget, I know you have other powers. How do you explain your clairvoyance?”

“Well I haven’t worked out the specifics yet,” Cisco admitted, “but I know it has to do with vibrations. The unique vibrating frequency of our universe covers not just all space, but all time. I think what I’m seeing has something to do with those vibrations.”

He grinned cheekily up at Fate, crossing his arms over his chest. “But I’ll learn more once I grow up and get my own lab to study them.”

Fate’s eyes narrowed. “Explain Klarion then,” he snapped.

They continued in this way for some time, Fate producing objects or examples that he claimed to be magic, and Cisco shooting down each one. He was something of a theoretical physics junkie, despite being only eleven, and he’d been thinking about scientific explanations for magic since he’d first learned that people thought magic really existed outside of fairy tales. The more Cisco spoke the more frustrated Fate became, until he gave an angry sort of growl and turned aside, his cape swishing at the motion.

“You could always kick me out,” Cisco pointed out, “if you don’t like having me around.”

Fate turned back to him. “You must learn to control you powers,” he said, voice low and ominous.

“I can control my powers just fine,” Cisco protested. “I mean, sometimes I get headaches from using them, but I’ve never lost control of them.”

“You have much to learn about what you can do,” Fate insisted. “I am the best possible teacher.”

“I don’t want you to teach me,” Cisco argued. “I want to learn on my own.”

“You would be at far too much risk outside the tower,” Fate said irritably. “This is not up for debate. You will remain here.

Panic gripped Cisco, but he fought not to let it show. “For how long?” he asked shakily.

“Until I judge you to be fully trained,” Fate said.

“Sh-shouldn’t I tell my parents I’m alright?” Cisco couldn’t hide his stutter. 

Fate scoffed. “That would only invite danger. You have no need of them here, I assure you, and they will be safer.”

“You just want me to leave home, with no word to anyone, and stay here indefinitely?” Cisco demanded. “My mom’ll freak! She’ll-”

“You have already left home,” Fate cut him off.

Cisco hesitated. It was true, although he hadn’t meant to. It seemed so long ago he took Klarion’s hand, but he honestly hadn’t thought of how long he’d be gone. He’d figured no one would even miss him.

Cisco squared his shoulders and tried one more time. “I want to go home,” he said, as firmly as he could manage.

“Put it from you mind,” Fate said. “I have strengthened the barrier around the tower, rendering you unable to open a portal to the outside world. I cannot allow you to leave and risk your powers falling into the wrong hands.”

Cisco wanted to protest. He wanted to pitch a fit, scream and cry, throw the chalice at Fate’s head. Cisco did none of those things. He was exhausted, and his throat was raw, and it was pointless. Fate was as implacable as the force he was named after, and Cisco could think of no more arguments tonight. His captor did not care about the right thing, did not care about anything but his own agenda. Arguing would gain him nothing.

Fate showed Cisco to a room down the hall, with a desk and a wardrobe and a large canopy bed. Too tired to do anything else Cisco crawled under the covers fully clothed, and fell almost immediately asleep.

***

There was no window in the bedroom, so when Cisco woke he had no idea what time it was. It might have been noon, or the middle of the night for all he knew. For a few minutes he lay in bed, contemplating what had happened before he’d gone to sleep. He had been abducted, by an extradimensional force of chaos and then by a member of the Justice League. He had been imprisoned in a tower in another dimension. He had, at this point, no way of getting out.

Despite his best efforts not to, Cisco began to cry. How was he going to get home? What would his life be like in the meantime? Didn’t anyone come to visit Dr. Fate at all? Couldn’t there be a chance that someone would find him, would be able to rescue him, or at least get a message back to his family? Someone had to come here some time. They had to! Surely, someone in the League at least would . . .

A horrible thought struck Cisco. What if the League  _ knew _ about Fate’s actions. What if this was the type of thing he did all the time. He was one of them, surely they had to know what kind of person he was. Why would they let him be one of them if they knew he was capable of this? Unless . . .

Unless they condoned this.

Once that thought occurred to him he had to immediately shake it off. That couldn’t be. The Justice League were the good guys; they wouldn’t permit the kidnapping and imprisonment of an eleven year old. He just had to get a message out, get some kind of message out, and it would make its way back to them. Then they would come save him.

Full of fresh determination, Cisco wiped his eyes and slid out from under the covers. He had kicked off his shoes before getting into bed, so he sat on the floor to put them on again. His clothes were starting to smell a bit, but there was nothing to do about that, so . . .

The door of the wardrobe creaked open.

Cisco stared at it for a moment, wondering what had happened. Then he stood up and went to investigate. He reasoned there could be nothing inside big enough to hurt him, the wardrobe not being very large, but he could see no reason the door should have come open when it did. The left side was the one that had moved, but the door hadn’t come open very far, so he grasped both handles and pulled.

Inside the wardrobe was a collection of clothes that looked to be just his size. Unfortunately, none of them were things he’d have liked to wear. Tunics and pants that looked like they belonged in the medieval period hung on old wooden hooks, and down at one end was what looked like a miniature version of Dr. Fate’s costume.

Cisco closed the wardrobe sharply and went to go have a look at the rest of the tower.

There weren’t many doors in the hallway off the bedroom, and the one from the fireplace room didn’t seem to be where he remembered it. All he found was a flight of stairs going down, which led to another doorless, windowless hallway at the end of which was a kitchen. It was very old fashioned, with a rough stone oven and no refrigerator, but he found a loaf of bread in one cabinet and a collection of fruit preserves in another, so he made himself a small breakfast and sat at a wooden table to eat it. When he was done he went to put the bread away, only to find another whole loaf where the first one had been.

“Show off,” he grumbled, shoving the bread in beside the second loaf and slamming the cabinet door.

When he was done eating Cisco went to poke around the rest of the kitchen. The cabinets were mostly bare, with the exception of the fruit preserves and a large chocolate cake with a slice taken out of it. Cisco cut himself a small piece and ate it with his hands, only to find that the cake had gone back to its original size when he went to close the cabinet. There was a sink with hot and cold running water, which seemed almost surprising given the technological state of the rest of the kitchen. He had half expected to need to go and get water from a well outside. That was when Cisco realized what was missing: there was no door to the outside of the tower. There was a window above the sink, but it only looked out onto a large green field, completely featureless and without the slightest hint of civilization nearby. He couldn’t portal out, and it seemed like he wasn’t getting out the old fashioned way either.

Eventually Cisco left the kitchen, planning to go back to his room and investigate the contents of the desk drawers. Once he stepped out into the hall however, he suddenly found himself in an entirely different hallway than the one that had led to the kitchen before. This one was similar, with stone walls and wood floors and lit with numerous candles, but instead of being empty the hallway had several doors on either side. After doubling back to make sure there wasn’t a second door leading to the kitchen -- which of course there wasn’t when there wasn’t even a door leading outside -- Cisco went to investigate the first of the new doors. It was locked. Trying the others Cisco found them all to be locked, and completely unresponsive to the strongest blasts he could produce.

It was clear that the tower was showing him only what it wanted him to see, he thought as he made his way back upstairs. It had shown him the way to the kitchen by leaving no way open but forward, and now it was showing him that it was bigger than it had let on, but was closed off to him for now. He wondered if the kitchen did have a door to the outside, but the tower didn’t want him to know about it. Cisco didn’t particularly appreciate being led by the nose through a sentient tower, and he huffed and bypassed the open door to the room with the fireplace when he saw it.

The door to his bedroom had vanished now, and there were no other doors on this level except one to a surprisingly modern bathroom. The stairs had also vanished when he doubled back to try them again, leaving only the open door to the fireplace room. When Cisco went in a fire roared to life in the grate, startling him a bit, and a set of double doors on the back wall flung themselves open. Cisco sighed and, deciding there was no point in doing anything else, went through them.

This time he found himself in a library, rows and rows of bookshelves lined with ancient looking leather bound tomes. There was an open space just through the door, with a large mahogany table and four chairs, and across from the double doors was a large stained glass window that threw colored light onto the table. Sitting on the table was a stack of books, dusty and ancient looking,with a rolled up scroll on top.

Dubiously Cisco opened the scroll and read what was written on it.

_ Pupil, _ it read,  _ I think you will find these books on the basic tenets of magic most instructive. You vocabulary is lacking, and these should do nicely to fill the gaps in your knowledge. Once you have finished these we will move on to more advanced practices. _

Cisco crumpled up the note and threw it across the room. Then he picked up the book on top of the stack and lugged it into the room with the fireplace. With a growl he threw the book at the fire, wanting nothing more than to see it engulfed in flames, but before a single page had touched the fire the book stopped falling. It hovered in mid air a moment, then opened itself to a page near the beginning and floated towards him, stopping at the perfect height and distance for him to read.

Cisco gave a wordless cry of frustration and smacked the book down to the floor. It fell this time, presumably because hitting the ground wouldn’t really hurt it. He kicked it, and it slid away across the floor, still open to the same page. Cisco glared at it a moment, wondering if he could tear the pages out, wondering if he could smear the fruit preserves on them or soak them in the sink. 

“You can’t do this!” Cisco shouted, throwing back his head to scream at the ceiling. “I won’t let you, I won’t read your stupid books or wear your stupid clothes or . . . or do anything you want! I’m not going to be your ‘pupil’ or whatever so you can just stop trying!”

This declaration was met with total silence. The fire continued to crackle merrily in the grate, and the book continued to sit on the floor, open innocently to the first page. He turned around the glare at the library doors, but they did not close or vanish. Nothing at all happened.

Cisco growled again and stood still, trying to think. There had to be another way out of here. There had to be a way to make Fate let him go. Insisting that magic wasn’t real had made Fate annoyed with him last night. Maybe if he refused to study, made himself so annoying that he could no longer be tolerated, Fate would just have to kick him out.

Suddenly a thought struck him. Leaving the book on the floor Cisco went back to the hallway and stood facing the blank bit of wall where he estimated that the door to the bedroom was.

“Open up,” he said firmly, “I want to get dressed.”

A stretch of wall slightly to Cisco’s left glowed bright yellow for a moment, and suddenly there was the bedroom door. Without pausing to be annoyed he went immediately inside and began sorting through the clothes in the wardrobe. He selected the miniature Dr. Fate costume and, as he had suspected he would, found a basic kit for mending clothes in one of the drawers at the bottom of the wardrobe’s interior. With a single-minded determination he set about altering the costume: removing most of the material of the sleeves, cutting off the high collar to which the cape was secured, and fashioning the wider part of the belt into a design to sew on the front. When he was through he put on his creation and looked at himself in the mirror hanging on the inside of one of the wardrobe doors.

He looked almost like himself, wearing something approximating a t-shirt with pac-man on the front.

Cisco grinned at his reflection. He might not be able to find a way out just yet, but that didn’t mean he had to follow the rules. If he was going to stay here he was going to do things his way, the way that infuriated Fate. He was going to make his captor regret even  _ thinking _ about keeping him here a moment longer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> special thanks to hedgi and kineticallyanywhere! hedgi for coming up with half the dialogue and ka for the lovely drawing of cisco in dr. fate's costume (with bonus altered version) that inspired the ending to this chapter. everyone go say thank you and if you ask real nice maybe that drawing will end up on tumblr.

**Author's Note:**

> so i've decided to deal with my plethora of aus in a new way: i'm gonna write the first chapter of multiple fics and then update them as the mood strikes. comments make me want to write this au more, so vote by telling me what you liked about this idea/fic/chapter. also, this is another one i planned extensively in collaboration with Hedgi, so go thank her if you enjoyed this work!


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